Tag Archives: oil

Keystone Pipeline Being Reconsidered; Tell Your Members of Congress it’s Important

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The Obama administration is seriously considering reversing its January 2012 rejection of the Keystone XL Pipeline project. A revised environmental impact statement from the State Department significantly eases environmental objections and opens the door for approval on a new application and revised route for the pipeline.

Opponents, most notably environmental extremists, have aggressively mobilized protests, lobbying and grassroots pressure on Congress and the President to kill the project. The White House is again under intense pressure and needs to hear from supporters of U.S. energy independence and the pipeline project.

The Indiana and U.S. economies are dependent upon reliable energy. Indiana has long been a leader in the energy and transportation industries. Low cost reliable sources of energy are critical to Indiana’s large and small businesses. Virtually every manufacturing process uses petroleum products as lubricants, parts, molds or finished products.

The $7 billion proposed Keystone XL project would construct a 1,700 mile pipeline to transport about 800,000 barrels a day of heavy crude oil from tar sand fields in Canada across the central U.S. to refineries on the Gulf Coast. The project is estimated to create more than 250,000 jobs and is supported by a broad coalition of business and labor organizations.

Recently, 53 members of the U.S. Senate, including nine Democrats, signed a letter to President Obama in support of the project. “We urge you to choose jobs, economic development and American energy security . . . there is no reason to deny or further delay this long-studied project,” they wrote. Nearly 70% of American voters support building the pipeline.

The new State Department statement predicts that Canada will continue to develop the oil sands and sell to other nations whether the U.S. allows the Keystone XL pipeline or not. Canada already provides more oil to the U.S. than all Persian Gulf countries combined. A new pipeline project would strengthen and expand this already productive and vital energy relationship. Not to mention, sourcing more of our energy from a friendly, democratic and North American neighbor will help reduce our reliance on energy resources from less stable areas of the world.

Call to Action: Send a message to President Obama and your members of Congress to urge approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline!

Mr. President, It’s Time to Approve Keystone Pipeline

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Categories: Energy, Environment, Government

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It's Keystone Pipeline time again. The Obama administration rejected the original plan last year. A new route for the job-creating, energy-supplying pipeline has been proposed and supported this time by the Nebraska governor. Despite climate change discussion, here's why the President should not stand in the way, according to The American Conservative:

This should be a no-brainer at this point. The Obama administration’s refusal to approve the pipeline shadily cited a lack of time to review the proposal; a presidential statement last year noted that the delay was “not a judgment on the merits of the pipeline.” Well, time has passed. Environmental impact has been studied.

As the editors of the Washington Post observe:

TransCanada has reapplied with a new proposed route, and this week Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman (R) signed off on the plan, following an analysis from the state’s Department of Environmental Quality. The regulators found that the new route would avoid the Sand Hills and other areas of concern. Though there is always some risk of spill, they said, “impacts on aquifers from a release should be localized, and Keystone would be responsible for any cleanup.” TransCanada will have to buy at least $200 million in insurance to cover any cleanup costs.

Adding to that, a letter signed by 53 senators, including nine Democrats, urged Obama to go ahead with the pipeline. “There is no reason to deny or further delay this long-studied project,” it said.

The decision to delay the pipeline reeked of election-year politics. Needless to say, the political calculus has changed. There’s a view that the rhetorical privileging of combating climate change in Obama’s second Inaugural Address will make it hard to throw environmentalists under the bus over Keystone. I think it makes it easier. Approving the pipeline offers Obama a small Nixon-to-China-like opportunity to say something like, We can safely fulfill our energy needs now while laying a foundation for a clean-energy future.

Partnership to Fuel America Coming to Indy October 4

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A request from the Partnership to Fuel America and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (with whom we are not directly affiliated):

Matt Koch, Vice President at the U.S. Chamber’s Institute for 21st Century Energy will discuss the benefits of North American energy development to American manufacturers and the American economy at large.  Joining Mr. Koch will be Christopher Guith, Vice President for policy at the U.S. Chamber’s Institute for 21st Century Energy, who will provide a briefing on natural gas, hydraulic fracturing, and renewable fuels.  
 
WHO: 
Matt Koch, Vice President for Oil Sands and Arctic Issues at the U.S. Chamber’s Institute for 21st Century Energy.  
 
Christopher Guith, Vice President for policy at the U.S. Chamber’s Institute for 21st Century Energy.  
 
WHAT:
Partnership to Fuel America briefing and luncheon
 
WHEN:
Thursday, October 4 from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.
 
WHERE: 
Bose Public Affairs Group                      
111 Monument Circle, Suite 2700 
Indianapolis, IN 46204
 
*Parking will be validated for the Chase Tower garage. Please enter on Pennsylvania Street.
 
WHY:
Affordable Energy for the Future – North America has it! We will discuss strategies and priorities.
 
RSVP:
Christina Kane at 317-684-5427 or ckane@bosepublicaffairs.com

Keystone XL Pipeline Wins on Capitol Hill Not Enough

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Categories: BizVoice, Energy

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The Congressional scoreboard reads 5-2 in favor of the Keystone XL pipeline. But few believe the job-creating project to transport oil from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast is any closer to its needed U.S. approval.

The House passed (293-127) a federal transportation bill Wednesday that will now go to conference committee. A provision in that legislation would force the administration to approve the pipeline.

It is the fourth time the House has given its approval on the project, expected to create thousands of jobs during the construction phase and help increase energy security in the long term. The Senate has taken three votes, passing it once as part of the payroll tax deal late last year and defeating it twice.

Not to be forgotten is the importance of the transportation bill. The Senate passed a two-year, $109 billion program two weeks ago. It is expected to be the basis for the conference committee negotiations.

The White House has already threatened to veto the highway bill if the Keystone language remains. Both, however, are critical to funding ongoing infrastructure needs and putting people back to work.

In the upcoming BizVoice magazine (available May 3 in print and online), I’ll have a one-on-one interview with Canadian Consul General Roy Norton, who talks about the importance of this project, the critical Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, and other opportunities between the two North American neighbors.

Canadian Bankin’

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Categories: 2012 Political Races, BizVoice, Energy, Government

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Pardon the title, but Canada is in a position to make some serious bank off of its natural resources — namely oil. In our upcoming May/June edition of BizVoice magazine, Communications VP Tom Schuman has an interesting interview with Roy Norton, Consul General of Canada, about how Canada plans to move forward after President Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL Pipeline. Although, Obama contends the rejection was pending more environmental review and may not be permanent. (If you have a few minutes, read Norton’s remarks when he spoke to a group at the Greater Fort Wayne Chamber of Commerce in February.)

At any rate, I just perused the article in the editing process and I think our readers will be intrigued by our northern neighbor’s concerns and ambitions. It also includes a quote from Norton that reinforces why the Indiana Chamber endorsed Sen. Richard Lugar in the 2012 GOP primary and general election:

"You can safely say that if there is one person in the United States Congress who gets the geopolitical importance and relevance of achieving North American energy self-sufficiency and what that could mean for North America in unburdening us, making us less susceptible to Iranian adventurism and Venezuelan adventurism, it’s your senior senator from Indiana." – Norton

Fewer Voters Blame Pres. Obama for Gas Prices

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Personally, when I see a hyperpartisan political opponent of a sitting president prattle on about how he’s responsible for high gas prices, I generally roll my eyes. (Truth be told, I generally roll my eyes when hyperpartisan people say anything.) It just seems like there are a lot of factors — OPEC-related and the like — that are out of America’s hands (although President Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL Pipeline likely won’t help matters). But according to a recent Washington Post article, fewer voters appear to be blaming the President for lofty costs at the pump:

Back in September 2005, gas prices surged to $2.90 per gallon across the country ($3.50 in today’s dollars), largely because Hurricane Katrina had shut down production across the Gulf of Mexico — an event that couldn’t plausibly be blamed on Bush. Yet 28 percent of Americans still blamed the president anyway. (Of course, one explanation is that voters were expressing discontent with the way the Bush administration handled the aftermath of Katrina.)

This time around, meanwhile, gas prices are even higher — the national average is now $3.74 per gallon — largely due to tight supplies and tensions between the United States and Iran (and the latter situation is something the White House actually is heavily involved with). Yet only 18 percent of Americans say the president’s responsible for pump prices. The number of Americans who are refusing to assign blame has jumped. Who knows? Perhaps after years of high gas prices a sense of fatalism has set in.

This jibes with political science research finding that, for the most part, a president’s re-election doesn’t hinge on the price of gasoline. Of course, that doesn’t mean that gas prices are meaningless — or that Obama can breathe easy about the situation. If spiking oil prices end up biting into economic growth, then the president’s prospects for re-election really would start sinking. As always, the economy matters a lot.

Canada Moving Forward After Pipeline Rejection

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The January decision by the Obama administration to reject the Keystone XL pipeline drew plenty of criticism in the United States. Canadian officials, while accepting the explanation offered, are concerned, and they are not sitting back and waiting for a potential change of course from their southern neighbors.

Roy Norton, Consul General of Canada, spent last week at meetings and events in Indiana. Norton is responsible for Canadian interests in trade, investment, the environment and more in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Kentucky. Norton provided his analysis of the Washington rejection of the pipeline that would transport oil resources from the tar sands of Alberta province to the U.S. gulf coast.

Norton says Canadians are “disposed to take at face value the assurances that President Obama offered Prime Minister (Stephen) Harper that this was a process-related issue, not a substantive decision.” In other words, Obama cited additional environmental review due to Nebraska seeking a rerouting of the pipeline and a deadline set by Congress as the reasons for the rejection at this time.

Although TransCanada, the energy infrastructure company behind the pipeline, has indicated it will reapply for a U.S permit, Norton described the significance of the relationship between the two countries and the next steps for Canada that are already in progress.

“There is concern. Ever since NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement), our resources have been predicated on the notion that we would develop them to export them to you (the U.S.), and 99% of Canadian oil exports have come to the United States. The entire industry has been organized on a principle that suddenly may seem in question: Does the United States continue to want that oil? And if you don’t, we’re not going to just stop developing it.

“The prime minister made clear, in a little jocular way, that we’re not a northern national park for the United States.” Norton continues. “We’re a G7 country with an industrial economy. We happen to sit on the third largest reserve of oil after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. Ours, other than the U.S., is the only one (oil supply) not government controlled; it’s total private sector investment.”

Harper traveled to Asia earlier this month and entered into an agreement on energy cooperation with the Chinese.

“Our objective, very much,” Norton adds, “is to build a pipeline to (our) West Coast and to be able to sell oil to China, Japan, whoever. Two or three years ago, the prime minister said Canada is an emerging energy superpower. Somebody challenged that and said you can’t be a superpower if you have only one market. So, in business terms, it’s probably true that it’s prudent for us to have more than one market. So we will seek to diversify.”

Norton closes with some of the numbers related to Canadian oil production and potential benefits for the U.S. and Indiana from the proposed pipeline:

  • Sixty cents of every dollar invested in the Alberta oil sands come back to the United States in consumption. “You benefit more from Canadian resource development than you benefit as a country from resource development (anywhere else).”
  • Currently, $160 billion in private sector investment is underway to take production of the oil sands from two billion barrels a day to three and a half billion barrels a day.
  • That increase, with the pipeline, could create “in the order of 343,000 jobs in the United States, 7,500 of those in Indiana” – citing Caterpillar and dozens of other Indiana operations that currently or would supply the oil production and the pipeline.

The Chamber’s May-June BizVoice® magazine will have more from Norton on issues important to Indiana and his country.

Keystone Pipeline Fallout Includes Union vs. Union Kerfuffle

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The Keystone XL Pipeline saga continues with Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar leading the effort to revive the project. The Competitive Enterprise Institute looks at the union divide that was deepened by President Obama’s decision to kill the job-creating movement of oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast.

Terry O’Sullivan, head of the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA ), has called Obama’s action "politics at its worst," saying that "once again the President has sided with environmentalists instead of blue collar construction workers." O’Sullivan angrily vowed that "workers across the U.S. will not forget this."

The Keystone project has long pitted the two key Obama constituencies against one another. Green groups agitated against the pipeline over worries of water contamination and other (largely baseless) environmental fears, while many building and trade unions lusted after the thousands of construction jobs the pipeline would create in the United States.

Mark H. Ayers, president of the Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO has publicly hammered the jobs issue. In a January 18th press release, Ayers voiced the frustration of many union workers, saying "…with a national unemployment rate in construction at 16 percent nationally, it is beyond disappointing that President Obama placed a higher priority on politics rather than our nation’s number one challenge: jobs."

James T. Callahan, president of the International Union of Operating Engineers, agrees, complaining to the Washington Post  that Obama’s decision was "…a blow to America’s construction workers," who are struggling in "the sector hardest hit by the recession."

In his rejection of the pipeline, Obama blamed Republicans for forcing him to meet what the While House deemed an arbitrary deadline. This despite the fact that the State Department has had the application for Keystone since 2008, held 20 meetings on the subject, and produced a gargantuan 1,000 page Environmental Study to assess the possible consequences of the pipeline, which would bring oil from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to the Gulf Coast of the United States. As Rep. Joe Barton of Texas ruefully noted, the U.S. "fought and won World War II" in a shorter amount of time.

Besides causing a fissure between the President and some of his key union allies, the Keystone issue has also ruptured the once-strong Green/Labor alliance between environmental and union organizations, and has even pitted union against union. LUINA announced on January 20 that it left the so called "BlueGreen Alliance," citing "Job-killing attacks on the Keystone XL pipeline by some of the alliance’s labor and environmentalist members."

The Alliance describes itself as "a national, strategic partnership between labor unions and environmental organizations dedicated to expanding the number and quality of jobs in the green economy."

While LIUNA has left the Alliance, many unions remain committed to the partnership between the Democratic Party’s two most powerful special interests and staunchly oppose the pipeline. O’Sullivan has called this emerging divide "as deep and wide as the Grand Canyon."

To these unions, the LIUNA President said he was "repulsed by some of our supposed brothers and sisters lining up with job killers like the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council to destroy the lives of working men and women."

Insiders Say Pipeline Not Dead Yet

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We’ve told you more than a few times in recent months that the proposed Keystone XL pipeline is an important project for Indiana and our country. Check out this two-minute video. After all, the $7 billion project will bring 700,000 barrels of oil a day from Canada to the U.S.

When the Obama administration recently delayed a final ruling (citing the need to reroute in Nebraska, but realistically putting off a politically tricky decision until after the 2012 election), many considered it a death knell for the proposal. But a group of energy and environmental insiders put together by the National Journal team in Washington differs with that assumption. Check out the latest.

“As long as there is substantial money to be made from developing the tar sands, they will be developed,” one Insider said.

Insiders predict (64% to 36%) that the economic and political reasons for the pipeline will eventually win out, arguing that the oil industry may hold out hope for a future Republican administration and GOP majorities in both chambers of Congress—under which the project would likely win swift approval.

Canadian pipeline developer TransCanada said that it will move the route out of Nebraska’s environmentally sensitive Sandhills area. The State Department last week proposed the rerouting to protect a massive aquifer there. Company officials, who had claimed that such a reroute wasn’t possible, said that the move will likely require adding 30 to 40 more miles of pipe to its 1,700-mile proposal.

President Obama was accused last week for making a political play with the pipeline, because the reroute would delay the decision past the 2012 election. For that same reason, though, most Energy Insiders believe the project will ultimately be approved. “Eventually, politics will be set aside,” said one.

In terms of politics, Insiders were split on whether the reroute decision and the consequent delay would benefit Obama. Just over half – 51 percent – said that the delay would help the president; 49 percent said it would not.

The delay until after the 2012 election “is a significant indicator of just how bad the Obama insiders think their election prospects are right now,“ one Insider said. In appeasing environmentalists but sacrificing some independent votes, the administration wanted to ensure it held onto its political base and contributions, Insiders said.

 

Economic Impacts of Where Our Energy Comes From

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Categories: Chamber News, Energy

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Having diverse sources of energy is a good thing. But the implications go far beyond the very important Indiana advantage of being a low-cost power producer.

The "other" implications will be the focus on an October 25 half-day summit titled Secure Energy: Our jobs, Our Economy, Our Future. In the words of the organizers, this event "will highlight the critical role North American petroleum and natural gas, particularly secure sources such as Canadian oil, play in America’s and Indiana’s economy."

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is the keynote speaker. Gary Doer, Canadian ambassador to the United States, will also be a presenter. Panel discussion will feature state and national experts.

The Indiana Chamber is a sponsor of the event at the Westin Hotel in downtown Indianapolis. Pre-registration is required. Full details available online.